This whole story really reminds me of crypto coins. Like.. going from mining one coin, or lets say token, to millions of fractions like 0.00000000001 bitcoin a week.
Yes, because it was a largely random undirected process.
Then you have to climb to another branch to get more fruit. The biggest issue with most problem space discovery is you're doing it blindfolded.
It accelerated from there rather than slowing down.
The complexity gets faster as you get on with it.
With AI, the question is still open if this will actually turn out to be something useful or if it will in the end just be another way for the elites to make untold profits.